Love

[MehGuy]

Although I do have the ability to feel romantic feelings when a woman is distressed or suffering pretty easily. Still not sure if that is love in the traditional sense. Growing up, I failed to view it as love and didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't until I got older that I learned how to channel those "loving" feelings in a realistic manner. Still hard to make it work though.

As far as being aromantic goes, many in my family are like me. Both my sisters use those terms and they don't seem to have marriage within the horizon and most of their boyfriends fail pretty quickly. I also have two aunts who never married and seem quite happy.

 

[MrMoe]

. Yep.

. I would post the obvious meme, but it's too easy.

. I don't know...

. Idk...

 

[blackribbon]

Yes...I have been in love.

I assume your question is "What is romantic love?"...it is a state of the heart which involves commitment and emotion...it involves caring for another so much that you are willing to sacrifice your own desires for the sake of the partnership.

I think many people fall in love with the feeling of infatuation and think that is love. I think that many people may actually feel love when they get married but they fall into the state of "boys against girls" or "him against me" mentality...where they measure what each person is putting into the relationship and when they feel like they are putting in more, they feel like they are being cheated. It not longer becomes a goal to please our partners but rather "how are they meeting MY needs"...and start to check out when they don't feel like their own needs are being met. This is when love dies and people become strangers to each other. When a couple faces life with the attitude that it is "us against the world"...and makes their decisions based on what is best for the family unit as a whole instead of what do I want (or what makes the relationship stronger) ... then the love continues to grow and can last a lifetime.

I stood at my daughter's homecoming dance senior/parent reception time and realized that I did not see one single married couple walk in touching each other in anyway. It made me feel as lonely for them as I felt standing there alone. At least when I was married, we still held hands and leaned into each other just feel a physical connection when walking into places together or standing side by side.

 

[miss-a]

I think I've heard it said that love is a choice. And I might make that plural, a choice that fans out into further choices. After the daze of attraction and infatuation begins to subside, I think we choose to love or not. And if we choose to love that person as our one and only for life, then we make a number of other choices that support and prove that love. For example Jimmy Evans says he has made a choice and decided that his wife, Karen, is the most beautiful woman in the world. And in that choice he chooses not to be attracted to other women and to make her feel she is the most beautiful to him. I think this is an excellent example, and really the only way continuing love can survive. If we look at the other side of the coin, and I'll even use myself as an example, it becomes a lose-lose, rather than a win-win for love.

Example: I meet a guy. We're attracted. We ultimately choose love and marriage. He's fit when we get married, but then gets injured and can't work out. He ends up getting a spare tire. I'm not attracted anymore and he can tell, so he feels all ashamed and less of a man and angry that I've put him in this position. I feel his anger, so I'm even less attracted. He feels this, and the cycle prevails. And all the anger causes him to eat more and get even more out of shape, and the stress keeps his injury from healing as fast as it could have. It all could have been prevented if I had in the beginning truly chosen to love him.

So I think the bottom line is choice. And sadly, our culture teaches us to choose ourselves over others and instant gratification. Love teaches us to choose the other's needs not necessarily over our own, but to have them have equal importance. And it teaches us to be patient. After all, my hypothetical husband was only temporarily out of shape. My hypothetical me really just needed to get over it support him with good healthy meals and work out with him with whatever workouts he could do without stressing the injury, but hypothetical me wasn't focused enough on his needs to begin with, because she'd never chosen love. She'd chosen looks. But in real life, many, I'm thinking most, couples get on the selfish negativity cycle instead of choosing love, and the results are dismal.

 

[blackribbon]

To reduce it to simply "a choice" means that we can marry anyone and just choose to love them. I think choosing to love is part of it, but it is more than that. Except in a few extreme situations, nobody wakes up changed such as suddenly out of shape or fat or no longer attractive. Maybe it is a daily choice to reinvest in the relationship AFTER you determine you love them enough to marry them. It also is a daily choice to put their needs and desires over yours or needs of the relationship over your individual goals. In a love situation, the spouse will do the same. You teach each other how to love by demonstrating it ... not dictating it. If you do it this way, then you never stop seeing the handsome/beautiful woman you married...even if nobody else sees that anymore. But if you let love die or turn it into a competition of my needs over their needs, then it will be a hard struggle to return to the place of love if you ever can again.

 

[NatureFanatic79]

I thought I was when I was married. Now I have no idea if I was, or what love is. So... OH WELL.

Ain't that the truth.

 

[miss-a]

To reduce it to simply "a choice" means that we can marry anyone and just choose to love them. I think choosing to love is part of it, but it is more than that. Except in a few extreme situations, nobody wakes up changed such as suddenly out of shape or fat or no longer attractive. Maybe it is a daily choice to reinvest in the relationship AFTER you determine you love them enough to marry them. It also is a daily choice to put their needs and desires over yours or needs of the relationship over your individual goals. In a love situation, the spouse will do the same. You teach each other how to love by demonstrating it ... not dictating it. If you do it this way, then you never stop seeing the handsome/beautiful woman you married...even if nobody else sees that anymore. But if you let love die or turn it into a competition of my needs over their needs, then it will be a hard struggle to return to the place of love if you ever can again.

Totally agree.

 

[James of Arc]

Yes...I have been in love.

I assume your question is "What is romantic love?"...it is a state of the heart which involves commitment and emotion...it involves caring for another so much that you are willing to sacrifice your own desires for the sake of the partnership.

I think many people fall in love with the feeling of infatuation and think that is love. I think that many people may actually feel love when they get married but they fall into the state of "boys against girls" or "him against me" mentality...where they measure what each person is putting into the relationship and when they feel like they are putting in more, they feel like they are being cheated. It not longer becomes a goal to please our partners but rather "how are they meeting MY needs"...and start to check out when they don't feel like their own needs are being met. This is when love dies and people become strangers to each other. When a couple faces life with the attitude that it is "us against the world"...and makes their decisions based on what is best for the family unit as a whole instead of what do I want (or what makes the relationship stronger) ... then the love continues to grow and can last a lifetime.

I stood at my daughter's homecoming dance senior/parent reception time and realized that I did not see one single married couple walk in touching each other in anyway. It made me feel as lonely for them as I felt standing there alone. At least when I was married, we still held hands and leaned into each other just feel a physical connection when walking into places together or standing side by side.

To reduce it to simply "a choice" means that we can marry anyone and just choose to love them. I think choosing to love is part of it, but it is more than that. Except in a few extreme situations, nobody wakes up changed such as suddenly out of shape or fat or no longer attractive. Maybe it is a daily choice to reinvest in the relationship AFTER you determine you love them enough to marry them. It also is a daily choice to put their needs and desires over yours or needs of the relationship over your individual goals. In a love situation, the spouse will do the same. You teach each other how to love by demonstrating it ... not dictating it. If you do it this way, then you never stop seeing the handsome/beautiful woman you married...even if nobody else sees that anymore. But if you let love die or turn it into a competition of my needs over their needs, then it will be a hard struggle to return to the place of love if you ever can again.

What do you do, copy this out of marriage text books or something. I thought you were a nurse not a counselor.

 

[EyesOfKohl]

No, I have never been in love so I cannot really comment what it is. God willing, my turn to experience it will come.